An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church for the Afterfeast of the Dormition, 7534/2026, by Priest Paul Siewers.

In today’s Gospel we hear from our Lord how the prophecy is fulfilled in Him that  ‘The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.” Yet this is also tied together with the prophecy in Daniel about the “stone cut out of a mountain without hands,” which fortells our Lord being born from the Virgin Mary without human seed, yet fully God and fully man.

This is the secret hidden in the ages, the leaven at work, and the Summer Pascha, the Dormition is the season most exemplifying the hidden beauty of this. For the Byzantines wrote a hymn of how the Wise Thief recognized the hidden God on the Cross, and on this flower feast we are reminded of the hidden beauty of our Mother in the Church who is also His Mother, the Mother of God.

This is sometimes called the tlower feast, for at the Dormiton we bless flowers, fragrant herbs, and seeds. We’ve also this Dormition season blessed according to Church Tradition honey, fruit, water, commemorated the Holy Woods of the Trees of the Cross, and yesterday nuts, grains and bread.

But the Dormition is most of all the flower feast. That reminds us of a little open secret of biblical language. The word Logos in biblical Greek means not only the Word, as a name for Christ, but also harmony. And thus the Word of God is also the Harmony of God, and involves beauty as well.

At the end of the Paraklesis service sung during the Dormition season is the question: “How do you nurse the Master?” That sums up the hidden beauty of the Theotokos and her Son who is also the Son of God, the Son of the Most Holy Trinity. Her womb contained the Creator, fully God and fully man. And as St. John Chrysostom points out, our Lord “had concern also over the honor of His mother, but much more over the salvation of Her soul and the good of men, for which He had become clothed in the flesh” (Commentary on John, Homily 21). In other words, He specially cared for her, as on the Cross, but He also saw the need to lead her to salvation as her Savior as well.

At the time of this flower feast of the Theotokos I am reminded of an encounter from my childhood with a sense of hidden beauty. My grandfather grew up on a farm inside what became the city of Chicago. In his old age, when I was young, he would come over to our house and help us with gardening. As a child I became very taken with gardening by his example and influence, and also because I had had tuberculosis and was out of school and away from other children for a long while, and it was a way to feel connected. During that time I also became a dedicated reader, and I discovered an interest in the Byzantine empire strangely, which God used over time to help bring me to Orthodoxy despite my sinfulness, but I also discovered something about the hidden beauty of God’s creation in the garden.

The mysterious way in which seeds fall into the ground, in a sense die as the Bible puts it, and then come to life and unfold into something amazingly great, like the biblical mustard tree. Yet all this occurred in a hidden way for me in the sense that it was in a garden in our inner-city backyard that was a place where a rabbit lived and raspberries ran wild with lilies of the valley, which somehow was separate from the city around us yet even more real than worldliness. While I at first loved planting vegetables and berry bushes because I was fascinated by how they could grow food from the earth, my grandfather most of all loved flowers. He taught me the value of beauty from God’s creation, which our Lord noted in His Sermon on the Mount when he said, behold the lilies how they grow, clad in a glory that kings never know. Experiencing this as I did as a child close up as it were with my grandfather’s influence, I could never subscribe to what the Irish Orthodox write Paul Kingsnorth criticized in his visit to Lewisburg as the global Machine, a sense in which a new religion of technology is sweeping us all up to ignore the miracle and mystery of Creation that the Church celebrates this time of year in our Dormition services.

The birth and death of the Theotokos in Orthodox tradition, unlike Catholicism, are fully natural, yet they also personify the mystery of hidden music in God’s creation and in His sustaining care for us, even to the point of sending His only begotten Son to save us, emerging from her womb. The beauty of the feast is seen in the distinctive icon of the Dormition, with Jesus holding His mother’s pure soul in the form of a baby, while the Apostles are gathered miraculously around her at her passing. Perhaps we as Orthodox Christians may take the beauty of this icon for granted, but hopefully not, for it is such beauty that brought us to Orthodoxy in the first place, and which continues to bring converts today. I have told many of you of a good friend of mine who is a retired college professor who in years of teaching brough around 15 students into the Orthodox Church. He told me he did so not by arguing about religion or about religious-related culture war topics such as gay marriage or abortion with them. He said he simply strove to show them the beauty of Orthodoxy. Then, whatever their worldly views before, as they came into Orthodoxy, those views change and melded into the outlook of the Orthodox Christian tradition. Beauty will save the world, a character in Dostoevsky says, and when the ambassadors of St. Vladimir the Great returned to him from Constantinople it was the beauty of the Orthodox service they described that led to the conversion of what would become Russia.

This holy day has hidden beauty in another way too: It’s not in the Bible. But it comes from Church Tradition that includes the Bible, and is in accord with the Bible..  It highlights how the Virgin Mary was fully human but also how she became divinized in theosis. St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, our little country mission’s patron, explained how she fully bloomed in beauty following her death in her resurrection in ways we still on earth cannot fully comprehend yet cannot ignore and which are the source of our delight in this feast of joyful sorrow commemorating her death and resurrection.

St. John writes, 

The end of the earthly life of the Most Holy Mother of God was the beginning of Her greatness. “Being adorned with Divine glory” (Irmos of the Canon of the Dormition), She stands and will stand, both in the day of the Last Judgment and in the future age, at the right hand of the throne of Her Son. She reigns with Him and has boldness towards Him as His Mother according to the flesh, and as one in spirit with Him, as one Who performed the will of God and instructed others (Matt. 5:19). Merciful and full of love, She manifests Her love towards Her Son and God in love for the human race. She intercedes for it before the Merciful One, and going about the earth, She helps men. Having experienced all the difficulties of earthly life, the Intercessor of the Christian race sees every tear, hears every groan and entreaty directed to Her. Especially near to Her are those who labor in the battle with the passions and are zealous for a God-pleasing life. But even in worldly cares She is an irreplaceable helper. “Joy of all who sorrow and intercessor for the offended, feeder of the hungry, consolation of travellers, harbor of the storm-tossed, visitation of the sick, protection and intercessor for the infirm, staff of old age, Thou art the Mother of God on high, O Most Pure One” (Sticheron of the Service to the Hodigitria). “The hope and intercession and refuge of Christians,” “The Mother of God unceasing in prayers” (Kontakion of the Dormition), “saving the world by Thine unceasing prayer” (Theotokion of the Third Tone). “She day and night doth pray for us, and the scepters of kingdoms are confirmed by Her prayers” (daily Midnight Service).

This reminds us again of the hidden beauty, hidden to the world, of this flower feast. Our Lord said, “Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” The Venerable Bede in Anglo-Saxon Orthodox England wrote of how the white lily was the emblem of the Virgin Mary, with the white petals symbolizing her purity, and the golden anthers representing in effect the uncreated light radiant from her in her theosis at the Dormition. The Song of Songs in the Bible, which the Church tells us needs be read as an allegory for the love of Christ for His Church, says, “as a rose among thorns, so is my love among the daughers.” The Virgin Mary as the dwelling place or tabernacle of the Lord is also closely identified with the Church, as in the center point of the Book of Revelation. 

Brothers and sisters, let us rejoice in this feast as the old Church year draws to a close, with the death of the last of the prophets John the Forerunner wrapping it up soon in two short weks. Across the horizon of the new Church year will come the Nativity of the Theotokos. And so the hidden beauty of the Church herself, not known to the world, will unfold again across the year and carry us through all the events of salvation, from the birth of a baby in a manger at Bethlehem to His death on a Cross with his mourning mother, and the joy at His Resurrection that carried her from Pascha to Pentecost and beyond to the Dormition we celebrate today, when she became the Mother of us all.

Most Holy Theotokos save us! Joyous Feast!

****

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew,

§87 [21:33-42]

The Lord said this parable: ‘There was a certain householder who planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen and went into a far country. And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one and killed another and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants, more than the first; and they did unto them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, ‘They will reverence my son.’ But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.’ And they caught him and cast him out of the vineyard and slew him. When therefore the lord of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?’ They said unto Him, ‘He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, who shall render him the fruits in their seasons.’ Jesus said unto them, ‘Did ye never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes’’? 

(Above) One of our young worshippers at the Feast of the Dormition at St. John’s, where we honored the Mother of our God and of us all in the Church, and following Orthodox Christian tradition also bless flowers, fragrant herbs, and seeds.
(Bel0w) An homily from St. John’s for the Dormition of our Most Holy Theotokos, by Priest Paul Siewers.

The Dormition, the falling asleep of the Most Holy Mother of God, also known as the Summer Pascha, is a time of reflection and renewal, of transition and passing in the Church year–

–From the old towards the new Church year

–From the summer towards the winter

–Looking ahead to the death of the last Old Testament Prophet John soon, and to our Lady’s Nativity in the new year

–And ultimately toward the birth of her Son our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ in high winter, the ultimate tidings of comfort and joy.

Dormition means falling-asleep, a term we use when we express the hope that the faithful have fallen asleep in the Lord, as did our brother John this spring when we laid him to rest as the first Orthodox Christian burial in our Churchyard at St. John’s.

Our Lady’s falling asleep is a source of hope because:

–As the greatest of saints yet fully human in her birth and death, she exemplifies the way for us of theosis or oneness with the uncreated grace of God. 

–As she bore in her womb our Lord and gave him in that way His fully human nature, as He is fully God and fully man, so she also is always special in her identification with the Church, the Body of Christ. She is herself the fulfillment of the Old Testament tabernacle or dwelling of God, as exemplified also in her childhood in the Temple’s Holy of Holies.

–In her passing she also even more becomes our intercessor. For according to Church Tradition, even as our Lord and her Son took her soul up to heaven at the time of her passing, pictured in the icon before us as him taking her soul like a baby, so too her tomb was found empty after three days, like our Lord’s. Her Resurrection was in heaven, where her body and soul were reunited, the first such Resurrection before our Lord’s Second Coming. She dwells not only in Paradise the hope of the righteous before the Second Coming, but in heaven with our Lord where she intercedes for us.

At this time of her translation, we also are reminded through her of all the gifts that God has given to us, in this ancient season of Thanksgiving in the Orthodox Church. As the Priest says in the Liturgy of the Holy Gifts, “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all!” Like the Theotokos, we are reminded most of all to offer ourselves to Him, while we have been giving thanks during the Dormition season by blessing water, remembering the Holy Wood and origins of the Trees of the Cross, blessing honey and fruits and today flowers and fragrant herbage and seeds, and tomorrow for the After-Feast nuts, grains, and bread.

In the New Testament temple we bring ourselves as the unworthy offerings in hopes that, with the uncreated energies of God we also celebrated during the Dormition season at Transfiguration, we may follow the example of the Theotokos and with her intercessions be translated unworthily following her at the time of the Final Judgment. “Come unto me all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest,” our Lord promised. And the Dormition is a reminder, an example, a foretaste, and a promise of that rest to us all. Most Holy Theotokos save us!

I conclude with some words from our Father among the saints Ignatius Branchaninov, who wrote a beautiful commentary on the Life of the Mother of God. Here are a few selections from its ending.

“After the ascension of the Lord, the Mother of God, as we see from the book of the Acts of the Apostles, was inseparable from the apostles and lived in the same house, in constant prayer. The holy Evangelist Luke calls these prayers “prayer and supplication” (Acts 1:14), showing that all the activities of the Mother of God and of the apostles were focused on various modes of prayer, and that all their time was dedicated to prayer. It was in the context of this practice and way of life that the Holy Spirit came down upon the Lord’s disciples on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1), for the Holy Spirit always requires a disciple of Christ to prepare himself with the most intensive, constant prayer, before coming down upon him and overshadowing him. On this day, then, the Mother of God received the most abundant gift of the Holy Spirit, enlightening not only her soul but also her body. Her soul and her body themselves became sources of light. The Holy Spirit testifies to this. The holy Church bears witness to it. Spiritual reason affirms it.

“For those who wish to hear historical testimony, we recommend here the account of the Mother of God written by her contemporary in earthly life, St Dionysius the Areopagite, a well-known and learned Athenian, who was converted to Christianity by the holy Apostle Paul (Acts 17:34). Three years after the Areopagite had first believed in the Redeemer, he visited the Mother of God, who since the Lord’s ascension had been living permanently in Jerusalem in the house of the evangelist John. We quote the following from the letter of St Dionysius to the Apostle Paul: 

‘It seemed incredible to me, confessing before God, O our excellent leader and shepherd, that apart from God Himself on high there should be anyone filled with divine power and wondrous grace; no man can attain what I saw and comprehended not only with the eyes of my soul but with my bodily eyes. I saw with my own eyes the godlike Mother, holier than all the powers of heaven, of Christ Jesus, our Lord, whom I was granted to see through the grace of God, the condescension of the supreme apostle (John) and the unspeakable goodness and mercy of the most merciful Virgin. Again and again I confess before the might of God, before the grace of the Saviour and before the glorious honour of the Virgin, His Mother, that when I was brought before the face of the godlike, most holy Virgin by John, the head of the evangelists and prophets, who, living in the flesh, shines like the sun in the heavens, then there shone before me such a great and boundless radiance, not only outside but even more brightly from within, and I was filled with such a wondrous and varied fragrance that neither my weak body nor my soul could endure such and so many signs and elements of eternal blessedness and glory: my heart grew faint, my spirit grew faint within me from her divine glory and grace. I bear witness before God, Who dwelt in the most honourable womb of the Virgin, that if I had not remembered in my newly-illumined mind your divine teaching and commandments, then I would have confessed the Virgin to be God, and would have honoured her with the veneration befitting the one true God: because the mind cannot imagine greater honour and glory for a person glorified by God, than the blessedness that I, the unworthy, was granted to experience, being then entirely blessed and happy. I give thanks to my most good God on high, to the divine Virgin, to the excellent apostle John, and also to you, the highest and most solemn leader of the Church, who mercifully granted me such a blessing.’

“The Mother of God possessed in even greater abundance the grace-filled gifts of the Holy Spirit in which the apostles abounded. She had not only the gift of prophecy but also that of spiritual discernment and of wonderworking, and countless other gifts known to herself and to the Giver of these gifts. Incurable diseases were cured when their sufferers touched her. Her virgin body, sanctified by God, became a vessel and source of miracles. Just as the image of the Apostle Peter made on the ground by his shadow performed miracles (Acts 5:15), so the icons of the Mother of God to this day perform miracles across the earth preaching, bearing witness, and sealing with signs the truth of Christ’s teaching. The rays of the sun were the painters of the miraculous images of the Apostle. The apostles and the holy saints were the painters of the spiritual rays of the Sun of righteousness, of God and the Son of the Ever-Virgin, the wonderworking icons of the Mother of God. On the third day after her blessed dormition, the Mother of God rose from the dead, and she now dwells in the heavens in soul and in body. She not only dwells in the heavens: she reigns there. As the Mother of the Heavenly King, she has been proclaimed the heavenly Queen, and Queen of the holy angels and of holy people. She has been granted special power and special boldness in intercession before God on behalf of humanity. The holy Church, turning with requests to all the greatest saints of God, to all the angels and archangels, says to them: “Pray to God for us.” Only to the Mother of God does the Church use the words “save us.” The Mother of God is the greatest intercessor and helper of all those who labor to please God, and of all those who have dedicated their earthly life to serving God. When she appeared to a certain holy monk, she healed him from a grave illness and said that he belonged to her family. She is a quick consolation to those who mourn and weep. She speaks for those who repent; she is a true refuge for sinners who wish to return to God; she is a fervent intercessor for them before God. 

“Standing before the Mother of God, in deep reverence toward her greatness, in solemn bewilderment and astonishment, in the joy of faith and love, the children of the Orthodox Church bring to the Ever-Virgin the most joyful doxology. Accept, Lady, these infant voices, this infant prattling, attempting out of fervor of heart to define your greatness, and unable to do so from weakness of reason, from lack of words, from your boundless greatness. 

“Hail, tabernacle of God the Word! Hail, Holy of Holies! Hail, throne of the Almighty! Hail, enclosure of the God whom nothing can enclose! Hail, most holy chariot of Him who rides upon the cherubim! Hail, best of all dwellings for Him who is above the seraphim! Hail, height hard to climb for the thoughts of men! Hail, depth hard to scan even for the eyes of angels! Hail, tidings doubted by unbelievers! Hail, undoubted glory of the faithful! Hail, for thou provest devoid of reason those skilled in reason’s art! Hail, for the cunning disputants are shown to be fools! Hail, for thou hast torn asunder the tangled webs of the Athenians! Hail for thou hast filled (with spiritual knowledge) the nets (of faith) of the fishermen! Most holy Birthgiver of God! Glory to you! Most holy Birthgiver of God, save us! Amen.”

With all that, the Theotokos also remains for each of us our Mother in the Church.

Most holy Theotokos save us! Joyous Feast!

(Quotation from The Harvest: Spiritual Nourishment for the Church Year, Holy Trinity Publications)

A sermon for the Twelfth Sunday of Pentecost, the Afterfeast of Transfiguration and the Feast of the Holy Martyr Laurence, from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Today we commemorate the memory of Saint Laurence of Rome, who was martyred in 258 AD. Orthodox icons of him sometimes show him holding the gridiron or grate on which he was burned to death. He refused to give up information against Christianity to the authorities. According to tradition, he said, while being burned alive on the grate,  “I’m done on this side! Turn me over and eat!”

This was one of two remarks for which the Archdeacon of Rome is especially remembered. The other occurred earlier, when pagan officials persecuting Christians tried to force him to lead them to the church treasury in Rome, to take all her money for the government. St. Laurence led them to a hall filled with poor and crippled and sick people, and said, “these are our treasure.”

Archdeacon Laurence could have been tempted by survival, by comfort, by riches, by conforming to power in hopes of power, or all of the above–or by thinking his work was so important he needed to conform and thus be spared. But he did not entertain such temptations. He acted in the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ’s teaching in today’s Gospel reading (see text at the end below), by standing for his faith against all temptations to compromise.

Our Lord Jesus in the Gospel today shocked the young man by telling him that although he obeyed the commandments of God he still needed to give all his worldly riches to the poor.  That answer inspired monastics like St. Anthony the Great throughout Orthodox history. It was a challenge to martyrdom or witness then, and is a challenge to those of us Orthodox Christians living in the world in 2026. Consider how in our modern culture to dispense with worldly riches on any small to large level would be considered by many devoted to materialism and careerism to be a kind of death.

Jesus’s command follows His New Commandment, to love one another as I have loved you. Orthodox teachers on Scripture relate this to the message to the Church of Ephesus in Revelation. It called that Church back to its first love in the sense of the spirit of the apostolic Church, when people did not keep their worldly riches, but gave them to each other to meet the needs of others.

This involves emptying ourselves in Christ rather than asserting ourselves. In today’s world of economics and careers and professionalism and so forth, that is a kind of martyrdom, too, whether unto physical or social death. But remember that all of us will die anyway.

The result of self-emptying in Christ, note the Fathers and Mothers of the Church, is a sweetness in life and a true freedom that is always with us no matter what we encounter each day.

Elder Zosima in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov memorably noted this, in a novel that presented Orthodox teaching to a global laudience. The real-life St. Paisius the Elder in the last century did, too, explaining how the less we have in the way of possessions, the less stress we have in our life as Christians.

How can we accomplish this? Partly through the Jesus Prayer. That simple prayer said continually, “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me,” challenges us to surrender in humility our false sense of self, to lose our self in Christ.

There are other things we can do, such as saying an Akathist daily, reading a chapter from the Gospel daily, and challenging ourselves each day to meet the discipline of fasting, including confession and alms-giving and making it to Church including for Vigil and mid-week major feast days, no matter what else is going on. Such a framework for our daily lives is a type of spiritual self-care that also leads to loving others more than our self. That’s because it leads us to empty ourselves in Christ as a martyr or witness, as did St. Laurence.

The paradox is that this is indeed spiritual self-care. to love our neighbor as our self or, following our Lord’s New Commandment, more than oru self. For, as the Bible commands, we first have to love Christ with all our heart, mind, strength, soul—in other words, we need to empty ourself in Him. So, we love ourself in the truest way as we love Christ. Then to love our neighbor as we love ourselves is to love him as we love Christ. And to love him more than our self, according to His New Commandment, well that is a glimpse in our experience of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, of the love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. That is the core source and ultimate essence of a reality that lies beyond our conceptualizing.

To follow St. Laurence in witness, without tempting God but with a desire to bear witness without compromising our faith in our Lord, is not just sentimental idealism, but a form of spiritual warfare. 

In St. Laurence’s case, such warfare meant not giving in to the temptation that to divulge information about Church members or the Church treasury used to help support the poor and mission work, would just be a worldly matter that wouldn’t matter spiritually. He in effect waged a spiritual war to protect the vulnerable of the Church, as a necessary war, so to speak.

There can be different dimensions to necessary war, from the interior to the external, local to global. But all necessary warfare in a spiritual sense requires us to partake deeply with God’s help of humility and repentance, even as martyrs or confessors, confessors being those martyrs who face persecution without death. The mystery of confession is a necessity in all such warfare.

The Orthodox Christian Tradition distinguishes between necessary and just war. It does not see war as ever just as do Protestants and Catholics often. There are no Orthodox Crusades. But Orthodox Christians sometimes see warfare as necessary, a necessary evil, and thus right but not righteous, as the Orthodox philosopher Ivan Ilyin put it (or even, controversially, in a certain sense a holy war but not a righteous or just war–the words for righteousness and justice incidentally being related in biblical Greek).

That’s why St. Laurence took a stand in what was spiritually a necessary war. He did not compromise. The devil could have tempted the Holy Archdeacon: “Don’t lead the pagan Roman authorities into sin, just divulge the information they seek, it is only worldly information that belongs to Caesar and not Christ, and you want to be able to continue in your spiritual work.” Turn the other cheek, the tempter would say, twisting words from the Gospel. But to give in would have endangered the vulnerable, St. Laurence’s fellow believers, the local Church in Rome, and would have been a denial of Christ and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Such immoral compromise sadly is a way of life today in the most acceptable way. A friend of mine at a top university says that people in graduate school won’t go against false authorities to stand for truth because they fear for their careers. Then they become professors and won’t speak up because they want to get tenure. Then the same thing with getting promoted to full professor. Then the same thing for getting grants and higher-paying administrative positions and emeriti status. Then they retire and then he says they are dead, without ever standing for truth. This is true in other walks of life today in different forms, as well. The same is seen in a lack of real spiritual conviction about all manner of moral challenges in our decadent society today.

The Orthodox writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn noted after years in communist prison camps (amid the numerically greatest world persecution of Christians under Communism) that the line between good and evil is not between political parties or types of people, but the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. That’s where necessary spiritual warfare as practiced by St. Laurence must originate, involving continual repentance and humility and the mystery of confession, but also unyielding obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ — the Way, the Truth, and the Life, in devotion to His Church, the Body of Christ. This involves not blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. 

The early 19^th century Anglican writer Reginald Heber fell in love with an Orthodox Pascha service that he witnessed in Russia. He wrote a famous English hymn related to spiritually necessary warfare. It includes these verses that can remind us of St. Laurence as well as the dilemma facing the rich young man in the Gospel, and all of us who today hear the Holy Gospel and reflect the Life of St. Laurence.:

A glorious band, the chosen few
On whom the Spirit came;
[The] valiant saints, their hope they knew,
And mocked the cross and flame.
They met the tyrant’s brandished steel,
The lion’s gory mane;
They bowed their heads the death to feel:
Who follows in their train?

A noble army, men and boys,
The matron and the maid,
Around the Saviour’s throne rejoice,
In robes of light arrayed.
They climbed the steep ascent of heaven,
Through peril, toil and pain;
O God, to us may grace be given,
To follow in their train.

Holy Martyr Laurence, pray to God for our mission! And Glory to Jesus Christ!

+++

            The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew,

§79 [19:16-26]

At that time, a young man came and said unto Jesus, bowing unto Him and said: ‘Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?’ And He said unto him, ‘Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but One, that is, God. But if thou wilt enter into Life, keep the commandments.’ He said unto Him, ‘Which?’ Jesus said, ‘‘Thou shalt do no murder; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; honour thy father and thy mother; and, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’’ The young man said unto Him, ‘All these things have I kept from my youth up. What lack I yet?’ Jesus said unto him, ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven; and come and follow Me.’ But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto His disciples, ‘Verily I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.’ When His disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?’ But Jesus beheld them and said unto them, ‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’ 

+++

(Fyi, Heber’s hymn quoted above was made famous in the fictional film The Man Who Would be King, an anthem there of outlaw heroism, based on its use in an earlier story by Rudyard Kipling. But in real life it was the favorite hymn of Gen. George Patton, and sung at his funeral.)

A homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers, for Theophany 7534/2026.

If you wish to transfigure your life, this is the holiday for you. For today on Mount Tabor our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ has shown forth the pattern of Transfiguration, just as more than 1,500 years before he had shown the pattern of the tabernacle to Moses on Mount Sinai. Today’s holiday is for us as Christians, to help us realize how in Christ we may fulfill our life in Him and our body as the Temple of the Holy Spirit, in the Church, the Bod f Christ.

St. Gregory Palamas fought a long and sometimes lonely battle in the 14^th century to preserve the sacredness of this message, this pattern on the mount, for us as Orthodox Christians, when the Scholasticism or academic approach of the heterodox West threatened to erase it. For the Orthodox Church alone preserves the full teaching of Christianity on the uncreated light of God manifest in the Transfiguration, when Jesus Christ appeared full of that uncreated grace shining before his closest apostles, Peter, James and John, while conversing with the greatest prophets of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah, who had left this year many centuries before.

St. Gregory Palamas wrote that what was revealed in the Transfiguration was the purpose of our lives, that is theosis, or oneness with the uncreated energy or light of God. St. Gregory wrote: 

“So when the saints contemplate this divine light within themselves, seeing it by the divinizing communion of the Spirit, through the mysterious visitations of perfecting illuminations—then they behold the garment of their deification, their mind being glorified and filled by the grace of the Word, beautiful beyond measure in His splendor; just as the divinity of the Word on the mountain glorified with divine light the body conjoined to it. For the glory which the Father gave Him, He Himself has given to those obedient to Him, as the Gospel says, and He willed that they would be with Him and contemplate His glory.” (p. 33, Triads, Paulist Press)

The Transfiguration occurred 40 days before the Crucifixion to assure the Apostles of Jesus’ Divinity and inspire their faith in the Resurrection to come. This is why today’s Feast is 40 days before the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross coming up in the new  Church year. It was moved from Great Lent by the early Church because the Transfiguration was too joyous and glorious for that season, and instead it was placed at the time of harvest and during the Dormition Fast, pointing toward the Exaltation of the Cross. Originally, the Transfiguration in the Gospel was associated with the Festival of Booths or tabernacles, based in Old Testament worship commemorating the 40-year wandering of Israel in the desert. 

In the Gospels the Church everywhere become the tabernacle, and the people each a temple in their body so to speak. It was said of our patron St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco that, “A prayer of supplication was sung after which Vladyka, standing before a lectern, was delivering a sermon. I was standing next to my mother, and we both saw light surrounding Vladyka down to the lectern—a radiance around him a foot wide. This lasted a rather long time. When the sermon was over, I was struck by such an unusual phenomenon. I told what we had seen to our friend, who replied to us: ‘Yes, many faithful saw it.’ My husband who was standing a little way off, also saw this light.” (Bishop Alexander Mileant, Life and Miracles)

Mount Tabor itself is located in Galilee not far from Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth and from Cana where he turned the water into wine in his first public miracle. As such, it is located outside Judaea proper, and points like the Transfiguration to the Church as Israel for all nations. Galilee was more influenced by Gentile people and trade troutes. The mountain itself symbolizes a practical aspect of the Transfiguration, as St. Nikolai Velimirovich wrote the location on a mountain taught two virtues: “love of labor and godly thoughts—for climbing to the heights requires labor and the heights themselves represent the elevation of our thoughts t the things of God” (pp. 148-149, Prologue of Ohrid, vol. 2, 2002))

Our founding first hierarch of ROCOR, Metropolitan Antony, adds to this that “The prayers sung in Church today explain to us, brothers, that the Lord revealed His divine Transfiguration with the specific goal of persuading His followers that they, too, are to adorn their inner image with virtues and to shine also with external spiritual beauty” (Sermon, 1898).

The Apostles at first reacted by thinking of erecting tabernacles from the Old Testament tradition. But the Transfiguration was for us all, in the sense that the Theotokos, the greatest of human saints, having fulfilled the tabernacle in becoming the Mother of God, and the Body of Christ which she bore becoming the Church, in which we all are joined.

The uncreated light energizes this whole, the mystical unity given by God that sustains us in His Providence, what in Slavonic is called sobornost.

Jesus said “I am the light of the world,” of which we sing in the ancient Vespers Hymn “O Gentle Light,” and from that He also said to his disciples, and to us really, “You are the light of the world.” The Transfiguration illustrated this for the apostles and for us as hearers of the Gospels.

The pre-revolutionary Russian Abbess Thaisia wrote of her own experience, “I saw myself in some other world—in heaven, as I thought. An ineffable sweetness filled my soul. Everything was so full of light, so wonderfully beautiful” (p. 40, Autobiography). And of course we have the famous account given by Motovilov of his experience with St. Seraphim of Sarov of the uncreated light.

Sometimes today is called the Summer Theophany, because at the Transfiguration the Holy Trinity again was revealed, as it had been early in Jesus public career, now near the end. The Father’s voice was heard, Christ the Son revealed in the light that comes also from the Trinity as a whole, and the Holy Spirit’s presence seen in the cloud. Even to this day, tradition records a cloud that appears over Mount Tabor yearly above the Orthodox Christian monastery there on Transfiguration.

Finally I acknowledge my debt for most of the quotations about Transfiguration today to the study booklet Climbing Your Mount Tabor, a copy of which I picked up on Monday at Holy Trinity Monastery and Seminary in Jordanville. It is now in our library, I highly recommend borrowing it for family or individual study, and when I post a copy of this homily, I’ll include a link if you’d like to order it.  https://a.co/d/0iGUUxR0

Brothers and sisters, I want to leave you with one final thought as we after the Eucharist will bless the fruit, a yearly tradition. As we bless the fruit, think about how one message from the Feast of Holy Transfiguration is that we are the fruit, as we share in the uncreated light of the Holy Trinity given to us by our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. Glory to Him!

(Above) Archdeacon Paisios prepares for the blessing of the honey at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY.

Gratitude is a way of life that is healing, and it is also a key aspect of being a Christian.

As Orthodox Christians we take that further. Knowing that our Lord Jesus Christ is Himself the Way, as well as the Truth, and the Life, and that the Church is His Body, we can say that our gratitude is a lifeline. Christians were originally called followers of the Way, and that way is a journey of thankfulness.

Our thanks for all the things that God has gifted to us, starting with our life in Him, helps establish our relationship with Him. This helps us to open our hearts to His love, and realizing how we join in the Church as the Bride of Christ in marriage to Him in community with our Church family. We don’t live in a communist society or even a capitalist society as a Christian, we live in a gift society, that is, gifts from God shared with one another. The Jesus Prayer that we as Orthodox strive to pray throughout the day expresses this economy of gratitude , too. “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.”

By it we seek to remember the spark of God’s love in our heart, and to kindle it, as we would nurture a campfire, and implicit in this we are recognizing and remembering His love for us, in gratitude for this gift. Economy comes from a Greek word meaning law of the household, and it means theologically in orthodoxy the condescension of God to us, the help He gives us every day.

In daily prayer it can be good to remember what we have to be grateful for, and the Jesus prayer helps us remember. Our families, both in the world and our Church family, and above all God’s grace, energize with the love of God.  This is one reason why in the secular world the American season of Thanksgiving has endured as our national holiday. But there is this deeper, more ancient, and more powerful spiritually sense of Thanksgiving in Orthodoxy. It is not for worldly things, and it is not a noun but an active verb, to give thanks.

And we are now in the season of Orthodox Thanksgiving, the Dormition Fast. The Dormition or falling asleep of the Mother of God is also called Summer Pascha. As the icons depict, at the repose of the Theotokos, Her son our Lord Jesus Christ comes to take her soul, which in our iconography holds like a baby to take up to heaven. Three days after her passing, according to Church Tradition, her body has vanished from the tomb, taken up also into heaven. She becomes the first regularly born human being upon death to be taken into heaven, with her soul reunited with her body, the first after her Son to experience the Resurrection that we all will experience, God willing, at the Second Coming of Christ. Thus she becomes our intercessor and help, our Mother in the Church, whom we can ask for help in praying for us to her Son in Heaven.

As our friend Father Vedran from St. George Serbian Church, in Hermitage Pennsylvania, posted this weekend, “Approach the Theotokos with simplicity and humility, and you will find that she will answer you before you even finish your prayer.”

For the Dormition season commemorates her coming into Heaven beyond the Final Judgement, with her Son bringing human nature into heaven, and thus personifying for us the eschatological consummation of the Church and our hope in faith and love for salvation in Christ her Son.

Thus, embedded within the Dormition season like jewels are the three spas or feasts of our Lord and God and God and Savior Jesus Christ, Who was born from the womb of the Virgin Mary, and shephered her as the first fruit of the Church so to speak into heaven beyond the Final Judgment. 

There is the Feast of the Holy Wood of the Life-Giving Cross that we marked on Friday, which inaugurated the Dormition season, and also marked the Feast of the All-Merciful Saviour and His Most Holy Mother, commemorating the victories under the Cross of Byzantine and Russian armies preserving Christian lands against Muslim invaders in the Middle Ages. These are forgotten shadow wars to the West today, as with the battles of the Seven Maccabean heroes from Scripture also commemorated at the start of the Dormition season. Yet preserved by the Cross and earlier by types of the Church, we remember those victories and martyrdoms as contributing to the life of our Church, the fulfillment of Israel.

On the first day of the Dormition Season we commemorated the Holy Wood of the Tree of the Cross, we blessed the waters of Creation, and the honey of the bees. For the Dormition of our Mother reminds us also that we should be as bees, drawing nectar into good fruit for our Lord, rather than like flies occupied with nasty and wicked worldly things of the devil. The blessings of Creation’s good fruit, the gifts of God, continues with our Lord’s feast of the Transfiguration this coming Tuesday night and Wednesday, when we will bless all manner of fruits in what is also known as the Apple Fast. We honor at this major feast of our Lord within the Dormition season the uncreated light shown radiating from Him to His closest apostles on Mount Tabor. This was a full revelation of the uncreated energies of God, the open secret of Christian teaching preserved fully only by the Orthodox Church. This showed forth the oneness with God through His uncreated light exemplified by the Theotokos in achieving theosis, which the Orthodox Church teaches is the ultimate purpose and meaning of humanity in the lives of the saints, in which we can share in the mysteries of the Church with the prayers of the Theotokos and all the saints.

On the Feast of the Dormition next week, we will bless the flowers and fragrant herbs of the earth. And the next day after the Dormition we will bless the nuts and grains of the earth, in what is known as the Nut feast but liturgically is the commemoration of the Mandylion, the image made without hands, the precious prototype of iconography. For in that image Christ’s face is imprinted, and some see a relation here with the Shroud of Turin. This reminds us in line with the Dormition to extend our thanksgiving to the spiritual gifts of God evident in His Church as well as His meeting of our earthly needs.

Brothers and sisters, we may as Americans love the beautiful tradition of American Thanksgiving near the end of the autumn and beginning of winter. But even deeper we as American Orthodox Christians go with this season of Orthodox Thanksgiving. It is not so much about new discovery and settlement and colonization, as about primordial and cosmic mysteries of daily life and yearly cycles leading up to the final end times, for us as believers in the Body of Christ. This time of year also reminds us of the urgent need for us in giving thanks to bring others into the safety of our Lord’s Church in these latter days.

In blessing the fruits, water, and wood of the earth at this time, the Church reminds us of how the late summertime falling-asleep of our Mother the Theotokos shows us the Way that is her Son, and in the Body of Christ the journey of theosis before us, leading from earthly blessings toward the Final Judgement and Resurrection in Him, God willing. In this time we partake of gratitude and repentance and look toward the God-blessed fruits of our labors in the Church. For the end and beginning of the Church year approach, brothers and sisters. Shortly after this Dormition season we will commemorate the beheading of John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament Prophets, and the end of the current Church year of 7534 after Creation by the Byzantine reckoning still used on Mount Athos and in traditional Orthodoxy. The Cburch new year will then start again, commemorating the day of Creation, but the year of 7535, leading directly to the Nativity of the Theotokos in a short time. It links us in a chronology of our Church family all the way back to the Old Testament prophets and our fore-parents Adam and Eve. Thus the Church circles us by experience of her services through the events of the Gospels and Tradition back to the beginning of time and all the way forward again and beyond, so we are there with those events here in our little Church, and also in the experience of our lives and the cosmos at large. We journey to the end our Church year with a focus on gratitude in the next two weeks, a time also for the mystery of confession as part of thanksgiving. St. Cyprian of Carthage could have been writing of this wonderful season of Orthodox thanksgiving when he wrote, to have God as a Father, you must first have the Church as your Mother. Glory to God for all things!

(Above) Archdeacon Paisios, the apiarist of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY, participates in the “honey feast” last year.

A reflection on services at the start of the Formation Feast at St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Tonight at St. John’s we commemorated the eve of the Procession of the Holy Wood of the Life-Giving Cross with an Akathist to the Holy Cross, followed by the Lesser Blessing of the Waters, and the Blessing of the Honey.

This eve of the start of the Dormition Feast marks also the “Honey Feast” or “Honey Spas,” a mini-feast dedicated to our Lord Jesus Christ’s Cross, and embedded in the Dormition Season.

Because of the joyful sorrow running through this season, the Dormition Fast is not labeled Summer Lent; that title belongs to the Apostles Fast–and truly to savor both and the distinction between what each bring to the summer Church, you need to be on the actual Church calendar, as is our parish, glory to God! (For the Apostles Fast usually practically disappears on the modern secular calendar used by a minority of Orthodox Christians who follow the established secular time of the modern West.)

This season of the “Summer Pascha” of the Dormition, the falling-asleep of the Most Holy Mother of God, in Orthodoxy is a time of bridging this world and the next. In Orthodox Christianity, unlike modern Catholicism, the Virgin Mary is regarded as fully human, and the greatest of all saints. Her departure from the earth involves Jesus taking her soul up to heaven, followed by the taking up of her body, so that she becomes first to be in the Kingdom of Heaven resurrected. This is a great source of our own hope when we call upon her to pray for us and intercede with her Son, as she did paradigmatically at the Wedding of Cana in the Gospels.

We are nearing the end of the year on the traditional Orthodox Christian calendar, heading toward the new year of 7535 on Sept. 1 (Sept. 14 on the civil calendar). And this time of “high summer” is a time of thanksgiving for harvests along with commemorating the departure of the Theotokos, who in her repose and passing becomes our intercessor in Heaven with her Son, even as the fruit-bearing Church comes to harvest.

So many rich layers in our Church Tradition: Today is also called the Feast of the All-Merciful Saviour and His Most Holy Mother, and commemorates the victories under the Cross of Byzantine and Russian armies defending their Christian communities against Muslim invaders in the Middle Ages in what to the West are forgotten shadow wars that defended it too, as did the Seven Maccabean heroes from Scripture whom we also commemorate today. As the American ROCOR Priest Sergei Sveshnikov has noted, the feast has living significance not just historical: “We rejoice in the living God, Who continues to bless and sanctify the labors of all who devote their lives to Him. Whether you are a missionary or an emperor, a monastic or a person who lives in the world, a beekeeper or a gardener, a computer programmer or an auto mechanic—when you labor for the glory of God, He accepts the fruits of your labors, blesses them, and sanctifies them.” https://frsergei.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/the-feast-of-the-all-merciful-saviour/

We give glory on this “Honey Feast” for first and foremost the Holy Wood of the Tree of the Cross, and then also bless the waters of Creation in a small local way (the “lesser blessing”), and the honey that is the fruit of the industrious bees whom we are called on to emulate. Soon, next week, at the Feast of Transfiguration, the “Apple Feast,” we will bless fruit. Then at the Feast of the Dormition Feast soon after will come the blessing of flowers. And the day after the Dormition, the “Nut Feast,” blessing nuts.

Holy Wood, the waters, honey, fruits, flowers, nuts, and strength for spiritual victories over what would erase the endless story of God in our lives. We rejoice in God’s gifts in the cycle of earthly life and from His heavenly Kingdom in the Church, in the gift economy of Creation. It is based on our relationship first with Him and then also from that with one another, in sobornost, the mystical solidarity of the one truly catholic Church of our Lord, the Orthodox Church. So this is the original Christian Thanksgiving season, preceding by a millennium and more even the old American Thanksgiving, and even deeper and spiritually richer. It is also a special season of repentance, a time for the mystery of Confession in the Church preceding the two major Feasts of the Church hidden in her folds so to speak this summer-time of year.

We rejoice in the final flowering of summer, asthe healing Paraklesis services of this season proclaim in the Unwedded Bride and Most Holy Mother of God, our Lady the Theotokos and Virgin Mary, who is the Mother of us all, and the exemplum of the Church as our Mother, whom we know in Holy Tradition to have had such an important influence on the founding era of her Son’s Church. Heading into the new year, and the evening of the year, we will look soon in the gathering winter darkness toward the morning star of the birth of her Son, from her womb that in utmost mystery contained the Creator of the World, and thus enabled the emergence of the Church as the Body of Christ. And we rejoice in all the gifts that God gives to us, starting with His Son, through her.

Encountering the Great Books (recognized across generations and cultures as classics) is central to a good liberal arts education.

Sign up for a half-credit course this fall that will allow you to explore some of Shakespeare’s greatest plays in a low-stakes but thoughtful discussion group, guided by a Literary Studies professor specializing in early literature.

ENLS 101 03, Great Books, will meet weekly on Fridays 10 to 11:20 a.m. It welcomes students from all majors and colleges at Bucknell looking for a way to deepen their liberal-arts education as they may pursue other areas of study.

The fall half-credit course, with the focus “Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits,” can be taken on its own, or in sequence with a half-credit course with different readings in the spring semester.

Readings this semester will include these plays by Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (one play every two weeks across the semester. Assignments appropriate to a half-credit course will include in-class written reflections on the plays as a basis for discussion. There will be no research papers or take-home writing assignments.

Meets AHLG, ARHC, FRST requirements.

Your instructor: Rev. Prof. Paul Siewers has taught at Bucknell in English Literary Studies for a quarter century, specializing in early literature, and received the President’s Award for Teaching Excellence. He has studied, taught, and written about Shakespeare as a part of his focus on overlapping themes between biblical, medieval and modern literature. A former award-winning writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, he is also a chaplain at Bucknell and at the Muncy State Women’s Prison.

This course is supported by the Bucknell alumni of the Open Discourse Coalition.

(Photo: Prof. Siewers leading discussion at the Bucknell bookstore.)

August Newsletter St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco Russian Orthodox Church, 7534/2026.Please note: On the Church calendar, August begins on Aug. 14 of the civil calendar, when the newsletter appears. Dates below are given in terms of the Church calendar/civil calendar. Contact us: 570-863-9039,priestpauls@pm.me, P.O. Box 155, Winfield PA, 17889. Website: stjohnthewonderworker.com

Regular Parish Schedule

Saturday Vigil 4:30 p.m., Sunday Divine Liturgy 10 a.m. (Hours 9:40).
Bible Study 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Bucknell Barnes & Noble Bookstore Café, Lewisburg.
Orthodoxy Online class, Saturday 10 to 11 a.m. Check with Fr Paul for link.
Akathist, usually Wednesdays at 7 p.m. (but on Thursday July 31/Aug. 13 at 6:30 p.m.; also, on the Feast of the Transfiguration, Aug. 6/19, there will be no Akathist; likewise preceding the Feast of the Dormition there will be no Akathist on Aug. 13/26 but a Paraklesis service, see below).

Details on special feasts, our film outreach series, and ministries are below.

May the Lord bless our community and mission work for His Church in Appalachian America!

The Dome and Cross Above Us…

…are now installed at St. John’s, glory to God! (see photo) Blessed by Bishop Luke of Syracuse and Jordanville last summer, the golden Onion Dome and Slavic-Style Cross are now on the roof of our Holy Temple, installed July 26/August 8. Let them together be a reminder to us of the inspiration of Pentecost on the Church as the Body of Christ and the relation of the Russian Orthodox Church to the ancient domed Churches of Byzantium and the Holy Land, and especially the Church’s grounding in the flame of Pentecost (all symbolized by the Onion Dome), and how we as Orthodox Christians live under the example and protection of the Cross of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, and like the Wise Thief with penitence seek salvation through His grace.

The Dormition Fast and Confession for Summer Pascha and “Orthodox Thanksgiving”

Welcome to High Summer on the Orthodox Church calendar, which is the “Orthodox Thanksgiving” season leading up to the Summer Pascha of the Dormition of Our Lady the Most Holy Mother of God, as we move toward the Church New Year. During this time, while fasting and celebrating two major feasts of the 12 in our Church year, we also offer thanks for God’s meeting our needs throughout the year in mini-feasts blessing harvests of honey, fruit, flowers, and nuts. Please keep attentive on the parish calendar to fasting requirements daily or contact Fr. Paul.

Our Church Tradition requires Confession at least during each of the four major fasting seasons of the Church, to be prepared to receive Communion. This Mystery of the Church is a “spiritual reset” and a joyful death to our sins, through the redemption of Jesus Christ. Please be in touch with Father Paul to schedule Confession during this two-week Fast in order to receive the Eucharist, especially if you also did not previously have Confession during the Apostles Fast earlier this summer. A new statement by our Bishops also has required that Confession in the Diocese be done with the Parish Priest as confessor/spiritual father, not elsewhere. If you are visiting elsewhere and wish to receive Communion, you should in advance request a blessing from Fr. Paul, so that you can communicate in advance to the Priest at the Church where you are visiting that you are prepared for Communion through Confession and regular participation at St. John’s.

The Dormition Fast begins Friday Aug. 1/14. We will have a special Akathist on Thursday July 31/Aug. 13 at 6:30 p.m. to mark its beginning, in honor of the Life-Giving Cross and the Feast of the Honorable Wood of the Life-Giving Cross that begins the Fast. As is traditional, a blessing of the Lesser Waters will be held at that time, together with a blessing of honey; please bring honey to be blessed! This is also known as the Honey Spas, the first of three special feasts of our Lord related to the Dormition season. (This Akathist will take the place of the regular Wednesday night Akathist.)

Proper Attire as Part of Preparation for Communion 

In approaching the Chalice starting at the beginning of the Dormition Fast, you will be reminded if needed of how you should wear proper attire next time you approach. Proper Church attire (as set by our Tradition and affirmed previously also by Fr. Claude and Fr. George) consists of long sleeves and pants for men, and a long dress or skirt with shoulders covered and head covering for women (head covered especially when approaching the Chalice). The purpose of our traditional attire is the beauty of humility as part of our worship and life practice (this is why the Priest unworthily for example wears his black Cassock and Riassa robes, pectoral Cross and Skufia, at all times, as a reminder of humility and obedience and accountability, and avoidance of any display of pride, for love of our Lord’s Church). This is also preparation for our Bishop’s expected visit this fall, God willing. After an initial caution on proper attire, in future weeks those not so prepared for Communion will be asked at the Chalice if needed to refrain from receiving until they are so ready. If needed, clothing items for borrowing will be available, please contact Fr. Paul as needed. Preparation of the heart is the most important readiness for Communion, but, like the preparation prayers, this should be expressed outwardly in humble obedience to our Holy Church Tradition as well. Thanks for observing this simple tradition of our Church that is part of the beauty of our govenie or spiritual preparation, glory to God!

Feast Schedule (in addition to regular schedule of services above)

Thursday July 31/August 13: 6:30 p.m. Eve of the Honey Feast. Akathist for the Holy Cross and Lesser Blessing of the Waters, with blessing of honey. For the eve of the Feast of the Honorable Wood of the Life-Giving Cross and the beginning of the Dormition Fast.

Wednesday August 6/19. The Feast of the Transfiguration, one of the 12 major feasts of the Church Year. Vigil will be at 6:30 p.m. the night before. Divine Liturgy at 10 a.m., Hours 9:40. Blessing of Fruit afterward. This is also known as the Apple Feast. Fish day. There will be no Wednesday Akathist that night.

Friday August 15/28. Feast of the Dormition, one of the 12 major feasts of the Church Year. Vigil will be at 4:30 p.m. the evening before (please note earlier time for weekday Vigil). Blessing of flowers after Liturgy. There will be no Wednesday Akathist preceding, but a Paraklesis service on July 31/August 13.

Saturday August 16/29. The Nut Feast. We will bless nuts at Vigil following the tradition of the Nut Spas or third small feast of our Lord during the Formation season.

Susquehanna Valley Orthodox Christian Film Festival Continues

Films are free, and will be followed by brief discussion. Invite a friend, inquirer, relative, co-worker to these outreach mission events. Out first showing, American Orthodox, outdoors in July was a hit. The opportunity to see even classic “old favorites” on the big screen in community, with discussion, is special. Glory to God! Note: These films include serious portrayals of faith amid human life that will require attentive parental supervision; parents are encouraged to speak with Fr. Paul about their age-suitability.

Tuesday Aug. 25 at 8:15 p.m. at the Church property (outdoors); rain date Aug. 27. Ostrov.

Sunday Sept. 12, 1 p.m. Campus Theatre, downtown Lewisburg. Moses the Black

Tuesday, October 20, 7 p.m. Bucknell campus: Elaine Langone Student Center Forum. Andrei Rublev.

Tuesday, November 17, 7 p.m. Bucknell campus. Elaine Langone Student Center Forum. Man of God.

Prison Ministry

Please pray daily for our Orthodox Christian inmates at Muncy SCI, Tanya and Tatiana, and those in the Orthodox catechism class including Beth and Meredith. If you would like to volunteer to help with the prison ministry, please contact Fr. Paul

Campus Ministry

Thanks to our Bucknell student Eleni for her work this summer in working on plans for the Bucknell Orthodox Christian Fellowship this coming academic year. Pray for our Parish University Students including Eleni, Maia, Kevin, Lizzie. We look forward to supporting our students both at Bucknell and at Susquehanna. If you would like to volunteer to help, and for a more complete prayer list of students, please contact Fr. Paul.

Youth and Young Adult Ministry

We hope to develop some activities this fall related to youth and young adult education during coffee hour that relate also to interests and needs of members of all ages. Please be in touch if you would like to help!

Shut-in and Senior Ministry

We have regular ministry to those who are seniors and/or shut-in, and can always use help, including prayers. Please especially keep in your prayers Mary, Innocent, Nicholas S., and those in our prayer list. For an updated prayer list of the sick please contact Fr. Paul.

Sisterhood of St. Olga of Alaska

We’re grateful to the Sisterhood for continued support of coffee hours and cleaning/landscaping. Hopefully with everyone’s help we can do more in those areas. Please contact Matushka and Sophia to help, thanks!

Brotherhood of St. Alfred the Great

The Brother has been helping to support the film series and our Susquehanna Valley downtown outreach events, which will continue this fall, God willing! Thanks especially to Longinus for his mowing the grace of our extensive lawn area, glory to God!

Praying for our Catechumens

Lord have mercy on Laura, Charles, Corey, James, Ty, Noah, Charles, Wyatt, Aaron! Give them good strength and wisdom as they journey God willing toward Baptism, O Lord! Please pray for them daily.

Keep in Touch

Please be in touch with any requestsfor prayers, blessings, rides to Church, home or hospital visits, or other needs. 570-863-9039, priestpauls@pm.me.

Glory to God for all things!

Pictures: (Above) “The Arming and Departure of the Knights of the Round Table on the Quest for the Holy Grail,” by Edward Burne-Jones. (Below) Entering our Church with her new Onion Dome and Slavic Cross last night.

An Homily for the Tenth Sunday of Pentecost from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Two great quests in modern Western imagination have been the quest for the lost Ark of the Convenant and for the Holy Grail. We have found both in the Orthodox Church, and brothers and sisters, this is our open secret, that they are both with us here in our humble country Church today in Appalachian America. Let’s first, though, consider a holy Orthodox pilgrimage place far away as we contemplate how we also have with us here in Winfield, Pennsylvania, the fulfillment of the Ark and the Grail.

Indeed, today Orthodox Liturgy is being said on remote Spruce Island, Alaska, to commemorate the glorification of Saint Herman of Alaska on this day in 1970. Our Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia has an important part in that tradition, which made today one of the great feasts of that founding missionary to America. Hieromonk Seraphim Rose of Blessed Memory with his monastic brothers spearheaded the canonization of St. Herman. It occurred simultaneously with services in Alaska and at the Cathedral in San Francisco where lie the relics of our patron St. John. Although in Alaska St. Herman’s relics are at an Orthodox Church in America cathedral, the churches around Spruce Island are peopled by American Serbian Orthodox monastic communities that originally were from Blessed Seraphim’s ROCOR monastery in California. So we all in America across jurisdictions join today in commemorating Saint Herman.The Irish Orthodox Christian writer Paul Kingsnorth, whose visit here our mission co-sponsored a few years ago, wrote this about his pilgrimage to Spruce Island:

“The skiff drops us on the sands of the appropriately-named Monks Bay, and Fr Adrian points us through the vast, mossy, Tolkeinesque forest, up a path through the trees. Head up there, he tells us, and we will reach the little church which is built on the spot where St Herman lived. Fr Adrian tells us he will catch us up when we have had time to savour the place and its atmosphere.

“And it needs savouring. There is something about this forest that I have never quite experienced anywhere else: a deep and abiding peace. It is very hard to put into words. At first I assume that the whole of the island must feel like this, but after I walk on later I realise that, in fact, it is only the area around St Herman’s cell that has this atmosphere. There is a kind of radical stillness. When Fr Adrian arrives ten minutes he later I tell him about it. ‘Yes,’ he confirms, ‘everybody who comes here feels this, whether they’re Christian or not. It’s as if the forest itself is praying.’ Or, I think, as if St Herman is praying too, somehow, for or in the place he once called home.

“A tiny wooden chapel stands today on the spot where St Herman lived as a hermit in these woods. Walking on from the chapel, winding paths take us through forests studded with icons and hung with huge lampadas of green moss.

“Deep in the forest, we pass the cell of Fr Gerasim Schmaltz, whose life deserves an essay all of its own (and in fact you can read one here.) He was a Russian monk who was sent to Alaska in 1916, only to be stranded here when the Bolshevik revolution happened. He lived the rest of his life on Spruce Island, often entirely alone ….Soon enough we come to another chapel – a bigger one, this time, and with a curious little door which appears to lead to a dark space beneath…. Pilgrims today still crawl beneath the chapel here to pray at the saint’s original grave, and sometimes to collect some soil to bring home. I have a little pot of it on my icon table as I write this.My daughter and I both pray at the grave site. Then we all picnic outside the church before Fr Adrian leads us through an open meadow studded with iris and salmonberry that looks like it ought to be in the Alps rather than in Alaska….

“[Spruce and a neighboring island] iare strewn with little wooden cells which at different times have been inhabited by hermits or pilgrims. The monks and nuns catch their own king salmon in the water around the island, and share food, firewood and prayer…..

“I have been on pilgrimages to many Orthodox places in many different countries since joining the church, but this place speaks to me in a way that none of the others quite have. I don’t know why that is, but there is some affinity. Overall, I am left with a wonderful confirmation of the mystical wildness of Orthodox Christianity. Monks stomping through mud in long black cassocks and wellington boots; sleeping in crumbling log huts in a forest of moss; netting salmon from skiffs; picking berries in mountain meadows. Compost toilets, fires on the beach, icons affixed to tree trunks. A forest of prayer. It’s all primal and real and full of the Spirit, and you can feel it everywhere. It feels like you have fled far from the over-civilised West – and yet this is modern America. Orthodoxy is a paradox, all the way down.”

Brothers and Sisters, truly Orthodoxy is a paradox or a mystery, even while offering us reason for our hope in God. Part of the mystery is that what pilgrims may find on their quests to Spruce Island, metaphorically their Grail or Ark but in actual lived faith, can also be found right here in rural Union Township, both in modern America and in timeless experience, and again not only metaphorically but literally so. This is the paradox of Orthodoxy all the way down, as Paul Kingsnorth put it. Blessed Seraphim Rose wrote that he felt no need as an American convert to travel to far places of Orthodoxy. Pilgrimages are beautiful and important to the spiritual life of the Orthodox Christian. We may go even in our Appalachian region to Jordanville, to White Haven, to Wayne West Virginia, and we should, as pilgrims to Orthodox monasteries. Maybe we someday will go to the Holy Land or Holy Russia or Mount Athos. But, as Blessed Seraphim noted, we also can find, like St. Herman on Spruce Island, our own pilgrimage each week and even daily, to the holiness of the holy of holies of the Ark and the Holy Grail of legend, right here, fully realized even in our little Church, a portal to the biblical Israel fulfilled in the Kingdom of Heaven, right here in Penns Woods.

Here is the open secret, the supposedly lost Ark and missing Grail are here with us in the Church. As the Apostle Paul noted in Hebrews, in the original Ark of the Covenant of the wilderness tabernacle, made according to the pattern revealed to Mose by our Lord Jesus Christ on Mount Sinai, were the tablets of the Law of God, the bowl of manna, and Aaron’s blooming rod. Nearby in the tabernacle and the bowl of incense and the place of sacrifice, from which the blood of lamb was scattered over the altar and the veils of the holy of holies at Passover. Some of these items disappeared when the Phillistines seized the tabernacle and art as the people of Israel were unfaithful. Then the Ark itself seemed to permanently disappear with the furnishings of the Tabernacle when the Prophet Jeremiah hid it just before the destruction of the Temple at the time of the Babylonian Captivity. Scripture describes how the place of its hiding was unknown and the Prophet said it would be revealed only in God’s time. In the book of Revelation indeed the Ar is described as reappeared.

We know in Church Tradition how the Theotokos the Mother of God fulfilled the symbolism of the Tabernacle as bearing the Body of Christ, which became His Church. We have in the altar area the Gospel book fulfilling the tablets of the law, the Body and Blood of Christ in the bloodless sacrifice of the Lamb at the Liturgy, which has replaced the pot of manna with the paten and chalice, and the blood of the sacrificial animal lambs of the Old Testament tabernacle and temple with the transformed gifts. We have the candle stand at the altar as there was in the tabernacle. We have the Cross standing at the altar that fulfills the type of the blooming rod of Aaron, which symbolizes the turning of suffering into resurrection through the Crucifixion and Rising of our Lord. Brothers and Sisters, the Ark of the Covenant is found and fulfilled in the altar of the Orthodox Church, our Lord’s Church. Likewise, the Holy Grail is found here in our Chalice, from which we partake in the Body and Blood of Christ at each Holy Eucharist, even in a small country Church reminiscent unworthily perhaps of little chapels of Arthurian lore and historical Celtic Christian landscapes, glory to God!

Early tradition in Britain says that St., Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail to Glastonbury, where it became associated with Arthurian legends and quests, and my research on this long ago helped lead me to Orthodoxy, thank God. Some scholars even speculate that the Holy Grail legends originally reflected the amazement of Western Crusaders encountering the Byzantine Orthodox Liturgy for the first time.

But our quest for the supposedly lost Ark of the Covenant and for the Holy Grail is fulfilled right here in a little country Church of our Lord too. May we be reminded of this as our Onion Dome and Cross rise above our Temple for the first morning ever, glory to God! The Onion dome echoes the domes of the great ancient Byzantine and Holy Land Churches in the humble forest traditions of Russian hermitagee, as well as the flame of Pentecost alit in the uncreated energies that we may experience in each Orthodox Church and in our lives as Orthodox Christians with God’s help. The Cross is our Lord’s emblem of suffering and victory, with the cross bar in the Russian Cross reminding us of the Wise Thief helped into Paradise. Let us remember today on this feast of Saint Herman, and each day, how we have the most precious pilgrimage each time we come to the humblest Orthodox Church in the countryside here, and dwell in our hearts in this pilgrimage, so that we don’t want to miss a worship service however far or arduous the journey. Because in her we fulfill those ancient living and timeless quests for the Ark and the Holy Grail, which are not lost at all, but dwell in our heart right here, in our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. Glory to God for all things!

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew,

§72 [17:14-23a]

At that time, a certain man came to Jesus, kneeling down to Him and saying, ‘Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is lunatic and sorely vexed; for ofttimes he falleth into the fire and oft into the water. And I brought him to Thy disciples, and they could not cure him.’ Then Jesus answered and said, ‘O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to Me.’ And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him, and the child was cured from that very hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus apart and said, ‘Why could we not cast him out?’ And Jesus said unto them, ‘Because of your unbelief; for verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, ‘Remove hence to yonder place,’ and it shall remove. And nothing shall be impossible unto you. However this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.’ And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them, ‘The Son of Man shall be betrayed into the hands of men. And they shall kill Him, and the third day He shall be raised again.’ 

Holy Gospel according to John, 

§ 52 [15:17-16:2]

The Lord said to His disciples: ‘These things I command you, that ye love one another. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you: “The servant is not greater than his lord.” If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for My name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent Me. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they would not have sin, but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth Me hateth My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no other man did, they would not have had sin; but now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law: “They hated Me without a cause.” But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth Who proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me. And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning. These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not lose faith. They shall put you out of the synagogues; yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.’ 

Immediately adjacent to the Moscow Kremlin stands the iconic St. Basil’s Cathedral, which is often considered the photographic profile of the metonymic headquarters of the Russian government since the 1917 Revolutions.

Actually, its real name is not St. Basil’s and it’s not fully a Cathedral, but that’s part of the fascinating history of this complex and wonderful historical, architectural, and spiritual place, the details of which are surveyed well in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral

It has a name of “Jerusalem” too as is the case with many historical Orthodox Christian temples, which serve mystically as fractals or portals for the Kingdom of Heaven, as do Orthodox Churches at large. St. Basil’s itself is designed with colors also reflecting the New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation. Its mix of the Byzantine trope of Jerusalem with a “Russian Renaissance” style with Italian influence relates to the development of the concept of Moscow as the cosmopolitan Third Rome of Orthodoxy.

But one of the most beautiful aspects of the tradition of the Temple–in addition to its very survival through the Soviet years (while still a museum it again has been hosting the Orthodox Liturgy since the fall of the USSR)–is the common name for it as St. Basil’s.

St. Basil the Holy Fool, or St. Vasily, was born a serf in 1468 at the portico of a cathedral in what is now Moscow, and traveled to Moscow when he was 15. His begging there involved seeking alms for those poor and hungry but embarrassed to do so themselves. Naked and weighed down with chains for penitence, he was said to have the gift of prophecy. Ivan the Terrible was said to have commented that the one person he was subject to was Basil the Holy Fool, and he rebuked the Tsar for being inattentive in Church. When he died on Aug. 2 (in 1552 or 1557) St. Macarius, Metropolitan of Moscow, led the funeral, and he was buried in what became known as St. Basil’s Cathedral. (Info from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Fool_for_Christ)

But the seat of arguably the world’s worst modern totalitarian government, the Soviet Union (in terms of its conduct and influence detailed by scholars in The Black Book of Communism), preserved the relics of a holy fool of Orthodox Christianity known for his authority over the greatest tyrant of his age. And survived. Glory to God for all things!